Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, 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 prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
