Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
