Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified 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
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
