Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
