Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
