Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
