Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
