Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
