Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
