Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
