Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
