Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
