Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
