Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
