Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
