Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
