Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
