Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing 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 accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
