Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
