Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
