Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds 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 joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
