Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – 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 pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
