Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
