Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
