Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
