Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
