Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
