Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain 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 paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
