Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
