Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
