Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
