Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
