Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
