Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
