Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
