Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
