Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the