Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more 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 distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
