Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
