Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
