Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
