Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
