Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
