Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
