Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
