Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – 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 eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
