Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
