Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
