Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
