Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
