Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
