Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
