Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
