Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
