Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
