Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
