Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
