Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next 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 hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
