Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
