Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
