Tings are falling apart in the last installment 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 tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element 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. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
