Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded 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 his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
