Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
