Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
