Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
