Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
