Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
