Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
