Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
