Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
