Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
