Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
