Things are unraveling 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 charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
