Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
