Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
