Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
