Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
