Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
