Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
