Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
