Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
