Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
