Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
