Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
