Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler 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 persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
