Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
