Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
