Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
