Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
