Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
