Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
