Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
