Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with 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 beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
