Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
