Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
