Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
