Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge 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 original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
