Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
