Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
