Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
