Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
