Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
