Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
