Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
