Things are collapsing in the last installment 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. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
