Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
