Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm 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 behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
