Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
