Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
