Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
