Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the