Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
