Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
