Rose Field Chronicles: Pullman's Thrilling Finale to the His Dark Materials Series

Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials 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 mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing 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 his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the