Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
