Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
