Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
