Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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 energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
