🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real 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, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the