Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
