Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
