Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
