Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
