Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger 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 the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
