Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
