Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
