Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
