Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
