Things are falling apart 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 charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
