Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
