Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, 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 leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
