Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
