Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the