Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
