Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
