Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
