Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
