Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
