Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
