Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. 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 act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
