Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
