Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
