Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
