Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
