Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
