Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
