Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
