Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant 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 previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
