Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
