Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
