Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
