Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
