Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
