Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
