Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
