Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
