Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
