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 seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
