Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
