Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect 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 adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
