Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
