Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
