Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
