Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted 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"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy 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 La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
