Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
