Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
