Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
