Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, 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 intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
