Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
