Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new 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". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 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 chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
