Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible 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 authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
