Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
