Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
