Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized 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"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
