Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
