Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
