Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
