Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
