Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
