Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
