Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
