Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
