Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security 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 Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
