🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the