Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, 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 first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, 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, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
