Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
