Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
