Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
