Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
