Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, 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 the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
