Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
