Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
