Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
