Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
