Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
