Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
