Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
