Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
