Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
