Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
