Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely 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, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
