Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
