Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
