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, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
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 continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
