Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
