Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
