Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
