Things are falling apart 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 charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
