Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
