Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
