Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
