Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
