Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
