Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision 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 reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
