Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
