Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
