Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
