Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "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 setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
