Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. 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 authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
