Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
