Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
