Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
