Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
