Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
