Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
