Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
