Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
