Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
