Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
