Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar 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". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", 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 collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
