Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
