Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
