Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
