Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – 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 stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the