Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
