Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
