Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
