Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
