Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
