Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
