Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
