Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
