Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
