Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
