Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real 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, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
