Things are unraveling in the last installment 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 skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
