Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing 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 authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
