Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
