Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
