Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
