Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted 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"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
