Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
