Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline 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 scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
