🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the