Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
