Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
