Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
