Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
