Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge 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 dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
