Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
