Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
