Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
