Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past 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 teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
