Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
