Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
