Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
