Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
