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 charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
