Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
