Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
