Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
