Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
