Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
