Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the