Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "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 philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
