Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
