Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
