Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
