Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
