Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
