Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
