Tings 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 tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
