🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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