Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
