Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime 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 independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
