Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
