Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
