Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
