Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying 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 disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
