Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
