Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
