Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
