Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
