Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
