Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
