Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
