Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
