Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out 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 origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
