Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
