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 seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
