Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
