Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
