Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
