Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics 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 La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
