Tings are falling apart 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. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
