Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
