Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
