Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element 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 final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
