Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
