Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
