Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
