Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication 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 act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
