Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
