Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – 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 pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests 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 scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
