Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
