Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
