Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
