Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
