Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
