Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
