Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
