Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
