Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
