Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant 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 persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
