Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
