Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
