🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the