Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
