Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
