Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
