Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
