Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
