Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our 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, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
