Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
