🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the