Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
