Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
