Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
