Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
