Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
