Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
