Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
