Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
