Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine 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 Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
