Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription 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.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect 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 wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
