🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the