Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
