Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
