Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
