Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
