Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
