Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
