Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
