🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the