Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
