Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
