Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
