Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
