Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
