Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
