Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
