Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
