Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
