Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
