Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
