Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
