Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury 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 origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
