Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
