Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
