Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
