Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
