Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
