Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
