Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
