Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring 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". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
