Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
