Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
