Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
