Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites 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 Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
