Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
