Field of Roses: Pullman's Nail-Biting Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Saga
Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
