Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
