Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
