Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
