Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
