Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
