Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
