Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – 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 preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
