Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
