Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
