Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
