Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
