Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
