Tings are unraveling in the final volume 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 skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
