Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
