Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
