Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
