Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
