Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
