Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, 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 search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
