Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
