Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
