Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
