Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
