Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
