Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
