Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – 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 if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
