Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
