Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
