Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
