Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
