Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
