Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
