Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture 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 landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
