Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
