Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
