Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
