Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
