Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
