Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the