Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
