Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
