Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
