Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription 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
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
