Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
