Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
