Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
