Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
