Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
