Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
