Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
