Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
