Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
