Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
