Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
