Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
