Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
