Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
