Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl 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 clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
