Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
