Things are falling apart in the concluding book 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
