Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
