Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
