Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
