Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
