Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
