Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
