Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child 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 spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
