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 appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds 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 accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
