Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
