Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the