Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
