Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the