Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
