Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
