Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
