Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
