Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
