Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
