Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
