Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – 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 childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
