Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
