Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
