Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
