Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
