Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
