Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
