Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
