Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
