Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
