Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
