Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
