Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing 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 draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
