Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
