Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
