Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
