Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine 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 its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
