Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
