Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
