The Rose Field: Pullman's Gripping Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Trilogy
Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
