Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
