Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
