Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
