Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
