Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
