Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
