Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
