Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
