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, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
