Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
