Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
