Tings are unraveling in the last installment 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 skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
