Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
