Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
