Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
