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 appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, 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 behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
