Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
