Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
