Tings are falling apart in the last installment 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 tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
