Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
