Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
