Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
