Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
