Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
