🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises 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, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the