Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine 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 chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
