Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
