Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
