Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
