Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified 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.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
