Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
