Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
